


Swaying

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Sharpe - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 03:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1628363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war never managed to dampen Harry Price's spirits.  Memory, his parents and the Regency ton, however, may be an entirely different matter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swaying

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Raven for the beta!
> 
> Written for Mme Bahorel

 

 

Harry Price supposed that Major Granby's daughter expected him to ask her to dance at some point. The thought worried him rather. As it was, only the trestle table behind him offered him enough support to keep him from falling forward into her ample décolletage.

The blood was pounding thickly in his ears, and he was sweating in the heat of the ballroom rather more profusely than was genteel - though no doubt in the girl's mind any degree of perspiration would be outweighed by the scent of his aunt's considerable legacy. The Granbys might be an old and deeply respectable family, but their fortunes had been distinctly dented in recent years.

Thinking of their respectability made him feel a little out of his social depth - having never been considered particularly eligible before - so he took another long sip of negus. He felt doubly uncomfortable in the jacket of his new regiment; he'd let the tailor's insistence on fashionableness override his suspicion that the damn thing was just too tight in the shoulders, and the blue facings were still unfamiliar. Kept catching sight of his reflection in the mirrors around the walls and wondering who the devil it was.

"Mama says your father's a frightfully clever man." Harry, who would never have considered his father anything of the sort, spilled his negus on his pristine new sleeve in his surprise. "I'm surprised you didn't join the Navy, Captain Price. The sea must be in your blood."

"Harry," he said, for the third time. "And I hate ships. Hate the sea. Always pitchin' a fellow about." She giggled, as though he had said something clever, and the feathers sprouting from her ridiculously-dressed hair bobbed. He'd been dragged away from where he was quietly drinking and waiting for Peter d'Alembord, trying to keep out of trouble in obedience to his father's instructions, and forcibly introduced to her before he could escape.

"Mama tells me you sing."

He managed to save his drink this time. "She what?" He goggled at her, aware that he was a little less than sober. The same couldn't be said for her; she'd been drinking nothing but ratafia, and she kept breathing the smell of bitter almonds right up into his face. He wondered if there was a polite way to ask a young lady of quality to breathe in a different direction as the smell of her breath was turning one's stomach.

"She said your mother says that you sing. That you were in the church choir."

"Good g--- I was ten years old!"

Where the hell was Dally? - he should have been there by now. God knew Harry needed rescuing, by someone who could talk sense. He skewed unsteadily around to look for him, but found his mother instead, across the room: more of the absurd feathers, and underneath them a very steely stare aimed in his direction.

He smiled at her in what he hoped was a reassuring way and saw her expression become harder still. Evidently he was more visibly inebriated than he had hoped. Barely a flick of her finger and he could see his father moving at the edge of the room, circling like a skirmisher to take down his son on his wife's command. He'd never understood how they communicated that way, silent and certain; he supposed it came with marriage, although it reminded him of nothing so much as Richard Sharpe and his sergeant, seemingly sharing a mind in the chaos of battle.

Emilia Granby coquetted up at him again, all feathers and cleavage; he found himself staring down her dress again, quite fixated. "You must have been a terribly sweet chorister, Captain Price - Harry. Do you still sing?"

"Sang in the army," he said, to her breasts. "About ships, sometimes, as it happens - couldn't get away from the wretched things. Hearts of Oak and all that."

As soon as he said it he regretted it, because between one word and the next he was back in Badajoz, his hands sweating as he sang. The cold April wind was throwing needly blusters of rain into his face, and behind him he could hear a man suppressing sobs of fear. He heard his own breath catch in his throat now, except that now was then and he was back in the breach, his feet catching on the bodies of men he knew as he scrambled up the hill of shattered stone.

He saw the Colonel thump down at the base of the ladder, saw Robert Knowles, god rest him, scrambling up with a sword between his teeth and blood all over his coat, felt his own foot catch on something and realised with the same sick horror that he'd felt before that it was a severed hand, fingers still spasming as it lay.

"Captain Price?" He managed to focus on her, blearily. Roses: there were roses on her dress, around its ruched hem and the ridiculous little sleeves. Pink silk on cream. He thought about the women of Badajoz, screaming naked or with their skirts hauled up around their waists.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said, quite earnestly, before leaning forward and throwing up the contents of his stomach, all down the side of the cream dress and the pale silk roses.

  
  
He wished that his father wouldn't shake him _quite_ so very hard: it made the candles in the corners of the little sitting room dance and sway. They kept it up even after his father had let go of his shoulders and begun pacing, and he aimed a vicious look at them. His arm hurt from his father's grip.  
  
"You could have asked me to leave the room with you," he said mournfully, across whatever his father was saying. "You didn't need to drag me. Like a dog."  
  
Mr Price rounded on him, all broad white-and-red face and fury. "A dog? A dog would behave better! Dear god in heaven, boy! - what more do we have to do? I purchased your commission - had you made up to Lieutenant - should have been the making of you. Yet you come back as sodden a rakehell as you left!"  
  
"You blasphemed," Harry said, shocked. "Took His name in vain." How very unlike his sober religious father that was, and how much more unlike was the sharp slap across his face.  
  
"Be silent! Nothing you have to say could possibly interest me now. We keep you away from the gaming tables, from the local girls - pay out for your bastard children for years, yes, and keep that quiet, while you're failing to get yourself killed out there - and still you find a way to shame me. What were you _thinking_?"  
  
"Hands," Harry said, and was gratified to see his father stop.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Hands. Twitching. After battles - Father, they used to.... Piles of limbs, outside the surgeons' tents. Higher than a farm dunghill, just thrown out - the _smell_ of it, like meat. Can't forget it."   
  
He rather thought he was going to be sick again, from memory or from Granby's horrible negus. His tongue felt thick and clumsy, his throat knotted - was he going to cry? Surely not. Dally, damnit, hadn't shed a tear when they shot his damn leg off. Harry himself had come through hell and survived.  
  
Erethysm, he thought. The Company's old prediction, coming true at last: too many mercury salts against the pox, turning his mind. He felt his teeth anxiously for the looseness the poisoning caused, felt Mr Price slap his hand away and closed his eyes. He fought the lump in his throat, dragged in breath, tried to find words. He wanted to put his arms around his father and weep on his waistcoat like a little boy. But his father hadn't been there, hadn't seen the blood or the stringing guts or how men wept on one another, blindly, when everything was done.  
  
"She'd never have married me anyway," he said at last, into his father's silence. "Not - not respectable. Money or no money." But when he opened his eyes, his father was gone. 

  
  
Discretion seemed the better part of valour after that. Harry slunk along dim corridors until he found the door to the outside, swearing at the floor tiles when they twitched and slithered under his unsteady feet.  
  
Outside the snow was still coming down in the silent dark, the cold like another slap, and he shivered his way across the flagstones without much concern for where he was going, so long as it was away from his father and Emilia Granby both. The lamps were lit, and there was a dim and glassy light ahead of him; he remembered the orangery from Major Granby's proud tour before dinner, and ducked inside.  
  
Inside the vaulting building it was dim and warm, lit by the spirit stoves that protected the delicate plants from the cold. I'm a delicate plant, Harry thought drunkenly, amused at himself. The air was moist and muggy, comforting, and he slid down to rest his back against one of the great wooden tubs, breathing in the scent of something tropical and late-flowering near the door.  
  
His new companion was a coffee plant, according to the boldly-written label, and despite the stoves and Major Granby's pride it didn't look much healthier than he felt. After a moment he decided that lying down was infinitely preferable, and for a while he lay on his back watching the snowflakes settle on the glass roof. If he was lucky, no one would find him here until the ball was thoroughly done - surely it wouldn't occur to his father to look for him in a glasshouse - and he could sleep off the worst of his inebriation before he had to face Emilia Granby again.  
  
Lulled by the warmth, the hiss of the stoves and the gently falling snow, Harry Price drifted into a sleep that was, for once, pleasantly void of blood.  
  


  
  
"I take it back," an amused and vaguely familiar voice said above him. He opened his eyes and stared up at the vaulting roof, wishing whoever it was would just go away. "About golf. For once you weren't making it up; I saw a man playing it myself, in Elie."  
  
He felt the worst of the tension go suddenly out of him, and closed his eyes again. "Dally," he said, happily, "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."  
  
A rustle and thump as d'Alembord sat down next to him, clumsy with his missing leg. "Last July. La Haye Sainte. You told me golf was even more dull than cricket."  
  
The day came back to him in a rush, the smell of smoke and sweat and _god_ the heat, the quaver in his own voice as he pretended to calm under the din of shells and guns and RSM McInerney shouting at a dying man. But, with Dally there, he somehow didn't feel so ill, and he could even smile. "God bless that aunt in Troom. Made me - 'scuse me - made me _eligible_."  
  
"So I hear." Dally's voice was dry, amused. "So what are you doing out here in a glasshouse?"  
  
"Orangery. Was sick." He opened his eyes, the image of Emilia Granby's face behind his eyes suddenly more horrible even than the twitching hand. "Puked my guts up on Major Granby's daughter's new dress." He heard Dally snort, and rushed on. "Thought you weren't coming. 'S beyond fashionably late."  
  
"I was held up. Arthur was unwell - nothing to fret over, just a touch of colic - but Anne was worried. Couldn't leave her like that 'til we were sure, not after the summer."  
  
Harry, struggling to a sitting position, abruptly envied both Anne and Dally for the warmth in the other man's voice when he spoke about his wife. "And how is your good lady herself?"  
  
He barely listened to Dally's reply. Damn the man for looking so well; heaven knew what picture he must present himself. Not even losing a leg could make d'Alembord anything less than impeccable _(the surgeons peeling back the ruined silk, the grate of metal on bone, Dally whimpering after in his sleep_ ). "Marriage suits you," he said, when Dally stopped. "Everyone's married," he added, maudlin again.  
  
Another snort form Dally. "As you might be, Harry, if you didn't puke on girls' dresses. Your breath is vile, by the way - here, swill your mouth out with that." He slipped a slender flask out from under his coat, and Harry obediently rinsed his mouth with an excellent single malt that Dally must have brought straight from Scotland. He spat into the tub that held the suffering coffee plant, and Dally wiped his mouth for him like a mother with the cuff of his spotless coat. "Much better. I'm not surprised you were sick if you were drinking Granby's wretched negus."  
  
"Saved me from the daughter, at least." Harry took another swig from the flask and winced a little at the sick-raw burn in his throat. "Must thank him for that."  
  
Dally took the whiskey away from him. His look said everything that Harry knew he must be thinking, worry and exasperation mixed. It had once been amusement instead of worry, but he supposed that Harry Price in peacetime was a somewhat different creature than the Harry Price that d'Alembord had known.  
  
"You need a keeper, Harry, more than a wife. Anne has some very patient female relatives. I should introduce you."  
  
"God forbid. You know me too well. What could you possibly say?"  
  
"I would say," and Dally wiped the lip of the flask fastidiously and took a sip, "I would say, 'Allow me to present my dear friend, Mr Price, a gentleman of impeccably bad character. He was once a major, for a very few weeks, before Whitehall quite wisely thought better of it. He has a great many flaws and very few virtues, a head for drink that exceeds his stomach's tolerance, and he will fritter away your dowry at the gaming tables but, by god, you will never lack for amusement.'"  
  
Harry laughed despite himself, and pushed himself up from the ground. "Find me a woman who'll take me on those terms, Peter, and I'll marry her at once." He held out a hand to Dally; the effort of helping the other man up had them both swaying on their feet until Dally steadied them with his stick.  
  
Harry took advantage of Dally's incapacity to take the flask back from him. "Just enough," he said defensively, taking a sip, "Just enough to get me up the ladder."  
  
"Back to the breach, then," Dally murmured, watching Harry absentmindedly pocketing the flask. "Forward, Mr Price, forward to glory."  
  
He swung purposefully away, his crutch striking hard on the tiled floor, and Harry hurried after, still unsteady, half-tripping on his own boots. "I shan't sing, Dally," he said, catching the other man at the door. The cold air burned his throat worse than the whiskey, and set up a faint pounding in his head, like distant guns. The breach? - but it was too cold even for Badajoz, too cold and the lamplight too gentle, and he wouldn't slip away there this time. He put his hand on Dally's shoulder to stay upright. "By god, I shan't sing."  
  
Dally steadied him again. "You don't need to, Harry, not this time. Not any more."  
  
The lights from the house were bright and steady, and he could hear women laughing. Perhaps it wasn't so bad, he thought vaguely, heading back with a friend to a ballroom full of pretty girls and wine. He followed Dally's uneven step across the cobbles, and let the door bang shut behind him.  
  


 


End file.
